58 Thoughts to “Open Thread 1/25/10”

Comment navigation

Mom :Which leads back to the question, where will Corey find construction money for schools and how will he stop development in the Linton Hall corridor if this bill passes?
I might also add that this bill probably comes as a direct result of counties like PWC abusing the proffer process while simultaneously blaming Richmond for all the ills faced by the localities. You reap what you sow and this might very well be an FU to counties like PWC.

For example, look at the whole fiasco involved with the Wiita Tract. Behind the scenes parties planned the whole project without any community input and before the property was even given to the county. Proffers are all about wheeling and dealing to cover something that might smell bad. I am disillusioned with the whole system.

It’s not really the system so much as it is the people entrusted by it.

Consider development plans that are approved and then amended with no public input or notice, amended at the site plan or subdivision stage by a cabal of developers and the planning office staff. That explains why specific questions asked by the BOCS are often given the answer “We’ll handle that during site plan review”. Thus, you get development that is vastly different than that presented during a rezoning. The underlying actions that moved the proffers from Wellington Green to the Wiita tract are a great example of this. Lay all of this at the feet of Griffith.

The Land Use section of the Comp Plan is another example. The text forwarded by the Planning Commission has been gutted and substituted by the Planning Office’s version that reflects their desires, essentially subverting the process and obliterating thousands of hours of public review and the work of the Planning Commission. Lay this at the feet of Utz and Griffith.

The transportation chapter is the same story. In fact the text has changed even more since the last BOCS meeting. Lay this at the feet of Canizales, Utz and Griffith.

All of this is enabled by our spineless BOCS and their own self-interests.

Mom :Which leads back to the question, where will Corey find construction money for schools and how will he stop development in the Linton Hall corridor if this bill passes?
I might also add that this bill probably comes as a direct result of counties like PWC abusing the proffer process while simultaneously blaming Richmond for all the ills faced by the localities. You reap what you sow and this might very well be an FU to counties like PWC.

For example, look at the whole fiasco involved with the Wiita Tract. Behind the scenes parties planned the whole project without any community input and before the property was even given to the county. Proffers are all about wheeling and dealing to cover something that might smell bad. I am disillusioned with the whole system.

Yes, I don’t like what’s going on with the Wiita Tract either. I will be directly impacted if that the biggest version of that soccer complex is built – complete with soccer stadium that I suppose will be lit up brightly at night, along with all the traffic it will create near my neighborhood. A few soccer fields would be fine, but one version is something like 7 soccer fields and a soccer stadium! I don’t think that’s what was intended for parkland in the Wiita tract. I personally hope it is used for more passive recreation, and is not open after dark for one thing. Right now the sky is still fairly dark in that area at night, which is good for astronomy purposes. But, it also may create a HUGE amount of traffic in the area around my neighborhood, and that is not good.

The Wiita tract is just another example, like the whole Avendale thing, of what is wrong with the whole process with the county and the developers.

I should note, the whole Wiita tract/soccer complex thing was a HUGE discussion at the recent HOA meeting in our community. That whole business caught everyone in our community by surprise – and the soccer complex will be right next to part of our community! Unbelievable how they tried to plan that whole thing with no input (or notice) to those who would be affected most by it. But, it’s typical, it seems. Doesn’t give me a very good feeling at all about the whole system, just like what NokesvilleNeighbor said.

I don’t know about your particular HOA but it is relatively common practice for the Planning Office, Park Authority, VRE, etc. to co-opt HOA boards, frequently without the HOA members knowing. Just a thought.

Actually, being new (relatively speaking – just a little over a year now) resident in the county, up until the whole WIITA thing I really wasn’t very familiar with the PA board. Really my only knowledge was of the BOCS. So it is a learning process for me, however I’ll resend my e-mails I sent to the BOCS to them, regarding my feelings about the proposed soccer complex on the WIITA tract. I can tell you, many people in my neighborhood are very concerned about it – it was a BIG topic of discussion at the last HOA meeting earlier this month. Very very few people in the neighborhood want it, other than a few soccer type folks who say (and probably is true) there is no good close soccer fields near here. I don’t mind a few soccer fields – but not the proposal that has 7 soccer fields and a soccer stadium to boot. If they want a multi-purpose park, with just some of it having maybe 3 soccer fields only for use during the daytime, I would be OK with that as long as some of it was set aside for more passive things like walking trails, picnic areas, etc.